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January 1, 2013

New Year's Eve Celebrations

I've been thinking about New Years' Celebrations I've been part of over the past few decades. It's interesting how things change. In my 20s and 30s, it was all about getting invited to a New Year's Eve party. Which basically was an excuse for people to get quite drunk and for men to plant sloppy kisses on you at midnight.

The last New Year's Eve drunk party I went to was many years ago. One of the women drank so much that she stripped to her underwear and ran out and rolled in the snow. Dozens of men happily chased her and helped her roll around. I remember watching and thinking "What the heck am I doing here??!!!" That was the last time I accepted an invite to a New Year's Eve party. Or maybe it was the last time I was invited. I was looked upon as a party pooper. I always disappeared when things were getting out of hand.

Pen Twin Theatre

In any case I was happier not going, and so a new tradition began with my brother and his family spending New Year's Eve at our home. We'd order in Chinese Food and go out to watch a bad movie. That's right. A bad movie. Preferably a comedy. My brother and his wife loved going to the movie theatre in the very small town near us. The theatre was an old curved metal Quanset Hut. And it was never crowded, a fact which amazed them since they lived in the big city of Toronto.

After about 10 years of venturing out to watch our movies, we began renting them (remember those days?) and bringing them home so we could just stay home and eat our Chinese Food and watch our funny (bad) movie from the comfort of our living room.

This tradition continued for about 25 or more years but when my brother remarried, it changed. I'm not complaining - his new wife had her own traditions and it seemed perfectly natural that they would shift to her New Year's Eve celebrations with her family.

So for the last 12 or so years, hubs and I have quietly watched the New Year arrive. We still order in Chinese Food and watch a movie. The last few years we've watched one on our Smart TV either through NetFlix or Cinema Now. How times change!

Actually the last time we both managed to stay awake long enough to watch the ball drop in Times Square was 2004. In fact in the year 2000 I watched it alone, waiting for something apocalyptic to happen, while hubs snored in bed. Last year hubs saw midnight alone as I was tired and went to bed!

Funny thing - this year we forgot. We had Chinese Food on December 30th because we forgot that the next day was New Year's Eve. It didn't matter, we ate leftovers. At 6 p.m. No more eating Chinese Food at 9 o'clock at night!

Then we watched a movie (yes it was bad - Tom Cruise in a badly acted and written Mission Impossible movie) using my Western Digital Passport external hard drive plugged into the USB port of our Smart TV. More changes. The movie was over at 9:30 and by 10 we were both in bed asleep!

So there you have it - how my New Year's Eve Celebrations have changed drastically over the decades. Funny thing is I enjoy them more now than I did when it was a wild and crazy evening.

5 comments:

This post made me smile. My hubby was in bed sleeping at midnight last night. But yesterday a 3rd cousin I didn't know existed emailed me and at midnight she and I were exchanging emails about our mutual family tree.Exciting? To me, yes.

We don't really have New Year's traditions. My hubby just isn't a holiday guy. And without a New Year's Eve dance to go to, it doesn't really matter to me. So, I enjoyed seeing how your tradition changed. And I can so relate to going to bed early, and I'm not that old. Thanks for the great read!

I'm an incurable collector of
antiques, an avid genealogist and a messy but creative cook! I blog, i write history and genealogy books. My main genealogy website is Olive Tree Genealogy http://olivetreegenealogy.com/

Lorine is the author of many published genealogical and historical
articles and books available at
http://LorineSchulze.com